Part of the problem is that I’m doing a ton of influenza reading, and I’m reluctant to talk much about influenza here. Maybe that doesn’t make much sense, but I don’t want this to be in any way an “official” blog. I also worry a little about inadvertently talking about unpublished and premature stuff. Still, I’ll probably have some flu stuff here as I get a better grasp on the field.

I usually don’t like to give brief pointer-type posts, but I think that’s what I’m going to try for a little while — short posts pointing to recent papers that have caught my eye, without the background and context I usually try to include, but that I don’t have time (or mental energy) for right now.

Besides catching up on the flu field and preparing to drive down to Atlanta next week to start at the CDC, some other things that are keeping me busy at the moment:

Finding landing spots for my students. I think we now have found labs and projects for all of them. One will move to the CDC with me and take up a flu project, while remaining an MSU student. This has all taken a certain amount of paperwork and planning

Playing catch with my kids in the back yard

Trying to rearrange my grants. I don’t know if it is possible but I have proposed a new consortium and principal investigator to take over some of them

Planning the future of my ongoing research projects. Some will stay at MSU; one will probably move to a group of collaborators

Arranging a temporary place to stay in Atlanta; looking for a permanent house in the Atlanta area

Taking my kids to their baseball games (Monday/Wednesday – William; Tuesday/Thursday: Matthew; Friday – makeup games for both). I’m an “assistant coach”, which means I tie shoelaces, rig up catcher’s gear, and act as 3rd base coach when I’m not doing the more important shoelace-tying jobs

Preparing our house here for sale. Anyone want a lovely home in the East Lansing area? Crayon stains on the carpets will be removed, unless buyer likes the dramatic effect

Co-ordinating plans with our movers. This is arranged through the government and takes a certain amount of paperwork

Writing part of a book chapter on influenza

Working on papers with co-authors. I play a minor role in 3 or 4 papers in press and submitted

Preparing 3 of my own papers. Two are very close (waiting for replicates on data for the final figures); one could be done but needs to wait for one of the others to be in press before I submit it

All the government paperwork involved in starting in the CDC. There is a lot, and none of it is Mac-compatible, whereas I have no Windows computers available. Hmm.

Going to our kids’ school for their end-of-year plays, performances, and parties. (Rainforest party this afternoon in Matthew’s class!)

There’s a lot more, but you get the idea. My kids get off school this Friday, and I plan to spend the next week mostly hanging out with them, so I want to get as much paperwork and so on out of the way this week.

Anyway, I hope I’ll be able to get back into some posts, even if they’re relatively terse, soon.

Yes, that's my plan for my own laptop (though I was looking at VirtualBox as a starting point for my own laptop) — problem is I don't want to shell out full price for Windows. I am pretty sure I'll get a discounted (or free) version once I'm there, so I'd feel silly spending all that instead of waiting a week. Of course, I need it now … I'll work it out, anyway

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